


I Let Him Climb Inside My Body

by Dylanobrienisbatman



Series: The 100 Season 5 [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Post-Series, Raven falls in love with Murphy over a long period of time, emori dies, im so sorry i love emori so much but this just sort of happened, space kru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 10:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dylanobrienisbatman/pseuds/Dylanobrienisbatman
Summary: If you asked Raven Reyes what she thought of John Murphy throughout the years, her answers would have varied widely. Falling in love with him wasn't part of her plan. But he didn't need her to love him, he just needed her to help him put the pieces back together. So thats what she did.





	I Let Him Climb Inside My Body

**Author's Note:**

> This seriously just ran away from me i have NO idea how I got this far, but here it is. Murven fic, my first one ever. Hope you like it!

If you had asked Raven 10 years ago how she felt about John Murphy, she would have probably punched you, or laughed so hard she fell over. John Murphy had been nothing more than a slug who seemed to always avoid the salt the world tried to rain down on him, slinking away into the dark crevices of the world, leaving a trail of slime behind him.

If you had asked Raven 9 years ago what she thought of John Murphy, she would call him annoying, call him stubborn, call him a cockroach, but also begrudgingly call him brave, resilient, and she would have reminisced fondly on how he was with Emori. Unfailingly ready to die for her, at any turn, against any threat. She would have told you about the way forgiveness felt like the weight of an entire soul being lifted off her tired shoulders.

If you had asked her 5 years ago, she would have called him a friend, family, the annoying brother that you couldn’t shake, but didn’t _really_ want too. She would have told you fond stories of them on the ring, how he was one of the only ones to bring Bellamy out of his shell, how he had taught them all to play chess, how he had helped make them a family.

If you asked her 2 years ago, she would have told you she loved him, like family. She would have told you she would protect him with her life. She would have told you about his marriage to Emori, about the love they shared, about how kind he had become, softened by time spent not fighting for his life, fighting for respect, fighting for someone, anyone, to just _see him_. Murphy had always just wanted, NEEDED, to be seen. She would have told you what it was like to finally see him, to know him. She would have told you she loved the person that she saw. She would have had nothing but kindness for him.

If you had asked her a year ago, she would have wept for him. She would have wept for the loss of his wife, and their unborn child, she would have sobbed for the loss of pieces of her family, and for yet another notch, dug deep into Murphy’s heart. She would have told you the wails she heard when Emori’s last breath had stuttered through her body was the worst sound she had ever heard, and the sight of Bellamy having to carry him away, because he physically couldn’t move his body anymore, and watching Clarke sedate him for days because his grief was too much for him to even breath, much less sleep, had ripped her soul apart in ways she hadn’t really thought possible. 

Needless to say, the journey of her feelings for John Murphy were a roller coaster.

Over the year after Emori’s tragic death, had taken a long time to get back to even being able to function. He spent weeks unable to eat, each of the space kru taking turns coaxing enough food down his throat to keep him alive, took turns bathing him in the days following, until he could grasp the situation again and stubbornly refused, even though they would wait outside the showers to make sure he didn’t try to drown himself in the water. They had also taken turns sleeping in his bed with him, warming the empty, cold bed space created by tragedy, or all piling in on top of each other, making a large pallet on the ground under the stars and somehow managing to touch, all six of them finding space on each other’s skin. Clarke would leave them alone, knowing the bond they shared was something different. She always looked a little lost when those moments came, but Bellamy’s soft whispers helped, even though Raven never asked what he would say to her. They would all spoon, a giant line of it, Murphy tucked soundly between her and Echo, her arms wrapped around him, finding the Ice Nation warrior’s fingers and lacing them together, pulling him snug. He always seemed a little less broken after those nights, like the warmth of them all was slowly melding his shattered soul back together.

If you asked Raven what she thought of John Murphy now, she would probably ignore the stutter in her chest at the sound of his name, and tell you to shove off.

The rest of the space kru (and Clarke) had found themselves, finally. Monty had reunited with Miller and she had smirked knowing it wouldn’t be long before they found each other for real. Echo had cautiously taken Harper’s hand over dinner one night, and Harper had breathed out a sigh of relief that seemed like it had been being held in for months. Bellamy… well… compared to Bellamy the rest of them had taken centuries. He had finally made his heart known to Clarke the first night they were reunited on earth, and (to the surprise of no one), had never wavered. It had been almost three years back on earth this time, and they had a beautiful baby boy, named Emery Wells Blake, who was always tucked into a baby carrier across Bellamy’s chest, his blonde curls falling over his giant brown eyes and freckled cheeks. The perfect blend of his parents. John was just barely back to himself, after months of grief, and Raven was… pining. To put it frankly. She wasn’t entirely sure when the way she felt for him had shifted, and honestly, she just woke up one morning, after it had been her turn to co-sleep with him, to find them tangled together, his chest rising and falling gently, his hair tickling her nose (she was always the big spoon), their fingers laced together, tucked up against his chest, and it hit her like a train, so hard she couldn’t help the soft gasp that escape her. It had been enough to wake him up, and he had that look he always did in the morning, before he remembered. It was a look of peace, of security, of a moment without heart breaking sorrow, before he would realise the warmth around him wasn’t Emori, and she was gone, and then the sadness would creep back into his eyes and he would turn to stone in front of her. He had rolled over, keeping the space between them as small as possible, this time, the look of sadness had crept in a little slower, and there was something else there. Something new.

“You know, you guys don’t always have to stay with me. I can be alone.” His voice was thick with sleep, his whisper barely audible, even right there, his breath warm against her nose. His eyes had closed again, which made her a little bit grateful, because he didn’t see the way she squeezed her eyes closed at the sound of his voice, or the way she brushed the tear the slipped out. Thankfully, even if his eyes had been open he wouldn’t have been able to see her heart skip a beat, or her breath catch in her throat. This new feeling was a lot, and it brought up a lot of questions in her mind about forgiveness, about truth, about mistakes and amends and the way people change. She realised she hadn’t answered him, even though it wasn’t a question.

“We stay because we lo-… care about you, John.” She stumbled over the word love, he knew they all loved him, but saying it in that moment felt like _more_ in a way she wasn’t ready to deal with. She called him by his first name, because just using his last felt like a lie. He wasn’t Murphy anymore, the slug with more resilience than anyone expected. He wasn’t even “John Murphy” anymore, said with a slight sneer and too much contempt. He was just John. John who had become soft, John who was full of too many feelings for his small body to hold. John who just wanted to be seen.

He pulled her into his chest, and she tucked her nose into the hollow of his throat, let herself be wrapped in him, the smell of him everywhere, the warmth of him seeping into her bones, and then they slipped back into sleep together, until the sun was high in the sky, and the sadness had creeped back into his eyes, and untangling felt like ripping herself in two.

She took every shift sleeping with him after that.

A year and a half after Emori was taken from them, and about 6 months after Raven’s whole world shifted on its axis in that warm, hazy morning, her new normal was eating her alive. Murphy didn’t need her to sleep by his side anymore, he didn’t need anyone to coax him through his life anymore, and it was making her ache to not have a reason to tuck herself in close to him anymore, because how would he react? What would he say? Had it been long enough, had the grief subsided enough? Would it ever have been long enough? Would he let her in? She never thought she’d see the day where she was worried about being rejected by John Murphy, she could imagine the way the contempt would leak into her voice at the very mention of it, but here she was, wondering how she could convince him to let her just be with him. Sleeping alone felt cold and made her more exhausted than anything.

He found her one night, off in a large clearing, with a fire crackling, lying flat and looking at the stars. He sat near her, arms draped over his knees, watching her intently. She could feel his eyes, burning into her, and it made her feel warm all over.

 “I miss space.” She hadn’t told anyone else from space kru that little fact, because she knew they would all scoff, as if there was nothing about space they would ever want to go back too. But John, John would listen, he would indulge her, he might even understand, or if he didn’t he would let her explain. He pulled his eyes away from her frame to consider the stars, and let out a slow, long breath.

“So do I.” His voice quivered, just enough that anyone else wouldn’t have noticed, but she heard it. She noticed everything about him. She was tuned into him, like radio frequency. She never really understood Bellamy and Clarke’s relationship, how in sync they were, how Bellamy could just _know_ something was wrong, even just superficially, and go running to find Clarke, like it was an instinct. Like a live wire connected them. But she understood it now, with John. She felt his grief in her bones, she felt his joy in her heart, she felt his pain, his exhaustion, his happiness, she felt it all.

“I miss you.” She barely breathed out, saying it to the cosmos, but meaning it for him. His breath stuttered a little in his chest, and she turned her head enough to see him looking a little bowled over.

“What do you mean, I’m right here.” He said, soft. “I never went anywhere.” She reached a hand out to her side, waving her fingers a little, and he slid over, laying by her side, lacing their fingers together. She thinks she might have imagined the way he breathed out a sigh of relief at the same time she did, at the contact of their skin, but she wasn’t sure.

“No, I know. I just miss… this. I guess. I don’t know.” She was brilliant, but sometimes words got jumbled when she had to talk about how she felt. Maybe she wasn’t ready to talk about how she felt yet. He squeezed her hand and she thought maybe she didn’t need to be ready just yet.

The next few months presented a notable shift. She didn’t sleep in his bed with him, but he would sit by her whenever they had a chance, he would find her in her lab or garage and pester her with annoying (read: endearing) questions, and make her laugh until her chest physically hurt from it. He was still Murphy, in weird ways. He was sometimes truly awful to everyone who wasn’t just the six of them. His violent outbursts were far less, but his snark, and general fury never failed him. When they had been young, so long ago, she had found it infuriating. Now it was part of him, and he was part of her, and maybe it wasn’t quite endearing, but when he would slam into her lab, growling under his breath about some ice nation soldier who bothered Echo a little too much or Octavia letting some Tri Kru scout take things that belonged to him, she couldn’t disguise the smile the crept into her cheeks. She sometimes thought of him as three different people, Murphy, John Murphy, and John, but it was in moments like that that she would see that he was always just John, and those other personas were part of him.

One night, sometime after his life had been ripped apart, she found herself pacing outside his door. She couldn’t sleep, she didn’t think she had slept well in almost a year, since he stopped needing her. She was so exhausted her body felt like lead, but she couldn’t get comfortable in her bed alone, she couldn’t find any sort of quiet in her mind without his arms around her, and she was just too exhausted to worry about what he was going to say anymore. That was, until she got to his door and realised she was going to have to knock. She had never been good at needing people, had never been good at letting other people in, even as a child. She had been pacing for about 3 full minutes when he opened his door, with absolutely no trace of surprise on his face.

“Are you going to come in, or just pace a hole in the floor in front of my door?” His words were clearly meant to be sarcastic, but she couldn’t find a single ounce of it in his voice, and there was something else, some feeling in his eyes that she was afraid to try to name. She rolled her eyes at him for good measure, before slipping into his tiny room. He leaned against the door, the casual air to the way he held himself putting her a little at ease. He was always so good at that, putting her at ease. She never felt like she had to impress him, or make him approve of her. He was John, and she was Raven, and that’s all it ever needed to be. “What’s going on?” he asked. 

“I just… I just can’t sleep,” she was definitely a culprit of constantly oversimplifying and trying to guide away from talking about her feelings. “Thought I’d see if you were up, come bother my favourite cockroach a little.” The nickname had once been laced with so much venom she was amazed it didn’t poison him, but now it was warm, something soft about it. Now she used it almost to remind herself that he always managed to stay alive, even when the world tried its hardest to kill him. Good thing, too.

“You were pacing like a madwoman outside my door, because you wanted to come in and bother me?” He sounded disbelieving, laughing a little under his words. “You could have just come on in then. I haven’t been sleeping well either.” The admittance seemed to tumble out, almost by accident, and if his eyes hadn’t widened a little she may not have even noticed. She definitely wouldn’t have wondered what it meant. Unfortunately, she noticed. Maybe just… honesty? She could try that. Blunt honesty. 

“Look, John…” She rubbed her hand over her face in exasperation, and when she pulled it away he looked almost terrified. She realised instantly that he thought she was angry with him. “No, no no no no, it’s fine I promise, I’m not- no, John.” She stepped across the small room, right into his space, taking his face in her hands, holding his gaze. He was always so quick to start, frightened easily with all of them, like he wasn’t sure they’d keep loving him if he screwed up. She was pretty sure Emori was the only person he was sure would never willingly walk away from him, and her heart squeezed in her chest and a lump came to her throat at the thought.

“John,” She said, her voice barely above a whisper, “John, I can’t sleep because I’m not with you. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since you stopped needing me to sleep in your bed with you. When I told you I missed you, that night by the fire, that was what I meant. I missed being close you, I missed feeling like you needed me.” He was looking at her now, a feeling in his eyes too much like the one from that warm morning so long ago, and her heart ached. “I just… I was pacing because I wanted to know if I could stay here with you. Just tonight,” she said, quick, trying to cover what she really wanted, “I just need to sleep. I’ll go tomorrow, I know you don’t need me here anymore.”

“Raven,” He had taken her hand from his face, and their fingers were brushing together, “Why would you be worried about this? You know I always… you’re always… you can always stay here, with me. If you need too. Or want too. Whichever.” She laughed a little, at both of them stumbling over their words, so close to each other.

“I’m not worried about THAT… so much… I guess.” She chose her words carefully, trying to find the right way to say it. Talking about feelings with Murphy was so much easier than with someone like Bellamy, always so eloquent, it was annoying. This was better. No expectations of poetry between them. “After Emori,” his eyes closed at her name, she placed her hand on his chest as an apology, “you were just so broken, John. So broken. And I could only help a little, I could only watch as you tried to piece yourself back together, but sleeping, here with you, was what I could do. And for a while, it was just that. Me, trying to show you how much I cared for you, how much you meant to me. You are part of my family, and I was trying to help you repair yourself, little by little. And then, I woke up one morning, everything was different. The way I felt, it had changed, a little. You were still like family, but it wasn’t… the same anymore. It was something bigger, I don’t know. It crept up on me, in such small pieces, in such little bits that I didn’t even notice until it was right there.” He was looking at her with that look again, her heart was racing. “But I never knew… how long you needed, or even if you would ever want… I don’t know.” She opened and closed her mouth a few times, hoping she might close it around the right words, hoping she could find the right thing to say. Murphy, to his credit, had the look on his face he always had when he found out someone loved him. Pure and complete shock and awe.

“You wanted to know how long I needed… after she… after… you… what?” his vocabulary was down to stutters, pauses, and pieces of words.

“How long you needed, to be with someone else.” Her words were barely audible, spoken so soft it was almost a breath, muttered through mostly closed lips. “I would never ever want to disrespect her memory, or your relationship, or push you into anything or… I don’t know.” She was talking too fast now, rambling, trying to keep her tongue from going ahead of her thoughts and getting tangled around words that she didn’t mean to say. “But I just thought, she would want you to be happy again, you know? And if you maybe… wanted to be happy with me… that would be what I wanted too.”

“To be happy… with you.” He was testing the words out on his tongue. “You want to be with me?” Always the tone of surprise with him. “Why would you want to be with me? I’m the one who…” he trailed off, his hand grazing the top of her thigh on her bum leg, ever a reminder of who he used to be.

“I forgave you for that a long time ago, you know that.” She touched his jaw lightly, reaching up a little further to brush the hair from his forehead.

“You want to be with me…” She nodded, just barely, and he was so, so close now, so close she felt like she could feel his pulse in her own body. He let his hands graze her hips, sliding up to her waist, pressing his fingers into back, on her ribs on either side of her spine, and she let her hands fall to rest on his forearms, and her forehead fall to his chest. He pulled her in close, and she’d call it a hug if it didn’t feel like so much more. She raised her chin just enough to bury her face into his neck, and they stood there, for how long she’d never know, just enveloped in one another. But the moment couldn’t last, because her leg was starting to ache from standing for so long, but he seemed to feel it, like the way she always felt him, and lifted her, bridal style, and carried her to his bed. Her face stayed buried in his neck while he kicked off his shoes, and she kicked off her own, and she pulled him down on top of her, letting the weight of him crush her, feeing safe under the pressure of this boy who was always bursting with too many feelings. They laid there for a while, breathing in sync, until the warmth of him had seeped into her bones and her head was spinning with how close he was, and all her nerve endings were humming. She turned her head, and he found her gaze, she could feel his heart beat against her chest, and he was so very close. She brushed the tips of her nose against his own, a question, but this moment needed to be vocalised. She wouldn’t let it be left to any level of misunderstanding. 

“I love you, alright. I am in love with you, like, I want to sleep here every day with you, I want to kiss you, I want to hold your hand, all that cheesy, romantic bullshit. I want all of that, with you, John Murphy. Okay?” Her eyes never left his, her voice never above a whisper, and the soft look in his eyes was breath taking. “You’re the most important person in my life, you’re… you’re you, Murphy. We’ve known each other for almost 11 years now, and you’ve always been you. Unfailingly. Unflinchingly. And I love every part of you.”

He breathed heavy, whispering his words to her. “Raven I don’t know i-”

“You don’t have to say anything, I know you miss her. I know you always thought she was it for you. But I want to be here, with you, no matter what, if you’ll let me.” He nodded, tips of their noses brushing, and she went to tuck her nose back into his neck, but he caught her chin with his thumb, kept their eyes locked. “However that looks for you, however that looks for us, I’ll be here. I promise.” She whispered into the night.

“Raven,” his voice was horse, like his vocal cords had a vice around them, his mouth close to her lips, her heart stuttering, “I’m going to kiss you now.” It was all she could do to nod, and he leaned down just enough to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. She shifted her lips just enough to the left, and found his mouth with her own, and finally just kissed him. It felt like finding home again, like finding happiness again. They kissed long into the night, mouths on skin, and hands roaming like teenagers, groping each other but never making any moves to remove clothing, or do anything more than just exist together. There was no fight for dominance, there wasn’t even a learning curve, learning how to kiss each other. It was entirely natural, kissing him, like breathing. It was different than Finn, always too soft with her, because he looked at her like someone he had to protect. Different than Bellamy, so harsh and ragged, all bite struggle, meant to distract. Different than Wick, who was always overly giving, in a way that made her uncomfortable, because he loved her way more than she could ever love him. With John, it felt equal, because they had learned to be with one another so instinctually, there was no hesitation between them, no questions, just each other, fully and completely. She fell asleep wrapped in him, her nose tucked into the back of his throat, her arms around him, and slept better than she had in almost a year.

Waking up the next morning, legs tangled together, her body was finally relaxed after so long. He turned in her arms again, like that morning so long ago, and the look in his eyes was there again. She looked for the sadness, and found it shallow and small deep within, but there was something warm around the edges, something good and soft and kind, bright and all for her. She peppered his face with kisses until he was laughing with his whole body, and hauled him out of bed to find food. He moved into her larger room later that day, much to the joy of their friends. Existing together became the simplest thing they had ever done, so natural and easy.

When he finally whispered that he loved her, six months later, breathing it into her neck in the dark, wrapped in blankets and each other’s arms, her heart didn’t stutter in her chest, because of course, she just knew.

If you ask Raven three years later what she thinks of John Murphy, she’ll tell you she is finally loved the way she deserves to be loved.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](dylanobrienisbatman.tumblr.com) if you wanna!!! - B


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